Gambling has become an increasingly important and popular form of entertainment. Particularly important to the gaming industry are electronic gaming terminals that can provide a wide variety of entertainment formats to individual players. Electronic gaming terminals may, for example, include reel slot machines, video poker machines, and video bingo machines. Because such gaming terminals are an important source of income for the gaming industry, casinos continually search for new ways to improve the profitability of their gaming machines by increasing functional capabilities. This includes improving their entertainment value by providing more sophisticated games, visual/audio displays, and user-friendly interfaces. It also includes better gaming terminal security, player tracking data for customizing marketing strategies, and more sophisticated financial and accounting reports.
Originally gaming machines were provided as stand alone devices that operated independently. Today, most gaming machines are in serial communication with at least one computer that provides serial polling of the gaming machines in a master-slave communication protocol to obtain gaming terminal data. Typically, each gaming function is performed by a separate host computer, which operates independently of any other host computers connected to the gaming machines. For example, an accounting computer, a player tracking computer, and a progressive game computer may all operate independently to perform a specific function.
Although these gaming terminals are connected to a central host computer, a gaming terminal is unable to share a wagering game experience with any other gaming terminal. This precludes any type of competitive or collaborative gaming, and any other type of shared game interaction with another player. These serial-based systems have limited communication capabilities. To support these new gaming wagering methods effectively and adequately, new types of networked systems are needed to support competitive and collaborative types of wagering games, allowing players to share the same gaming experience.
Some manufacturers have proposed developing a network of gaming terminals controlled by a server to provide gaming applications to each individual gaming terminal. In these systems, the distributed application server determines the game outcome and delivers the results of the game to the gaming terminal. This type of gaming system is termed central determination. The gaming terminals simply function as presentation devices for the distributed application server. This configuration presents problems on two regulatory fronts.
First, central determination of a game outcome is illegal and not allowed in many jurisdictions. Second, even if the jurisdictions do allow the central determination of game outcomes, such a server would have to be licensed as a gaming device in that jurisdiction. To license a server requires specialized testing in individual jurisdictions and represents another hurdle for gaming manufacturers to overcome.
In addition, using a central server for serving gaming applications has certain technological problems. First, the communication traffic in such a centralized system is extremely heavy. All game play information must be first communicated to the server and then relayed to those gaming terminals on which a gaming application is being shared. The long communication path can create latency problems that prevent the game from playing sufficiently quickly. In addition, timing becomes much more critical for competitive and collaborative gaming where a player may be given a limited time to respond to the game action.
An additional problem with centrally served games is that players may want to play individual games, rather than participating in a shared gaming experience. A central server could potentially be heavily burdened supporting many individual gaming terminals. Such a system is susceptible to a single failure with the potential for incapacitating large numbers of gaming terminals on the network.
To overcome these problems, a new gaming terminal network is required that allows players at different terminals to participate in a shared gaming experience with other players.